Bimodal gigaporous polystyrene microspheres with glycopolymer surfaces for high-speed protein chromatography

A bimodal gigaporous anion-exchange medium with the ion-exchange capacity of 0.215 mmol/ml was successfully developed based on hydrophilic gigaporous polystyrene (HGPS) microspheres (diameter between 60 and 115 μm). There are two types of pore in the medium, i.e., gigapores (0.3–7 μm) and mesopores (10–60 nm). The presence of gigapores in the medium can induce convective flow of mobile phase within microspheres, therefore contributing to high column permeability (3.55×10−10 m2), high dynamic adsorption capacity and high protein resolution at high flow velocities. The mixture of hemoglobin, transferrin and ovalbumin can be baseline separated within 3 min at 2529 cm/h. All the results indicate that anion-exchange medium as developed is very promising for large scale high-speed protein chromatography.